


Remission

by Edie (eshtah)



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Adult Content (Not Explicit), Adultery, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-13
Updated: 2010-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-11 19:30:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eshtah/pseuds/Edie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawkeye and B.J. are slowly spiralling towards one another, one unwilling to consider the implications, and the other all too aware of what he is risking. But war does funny things to people.</p><p>Warnings: Adultery and *SPOILERS* for season 6, episode 1, "Fade In, Fade Out."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remission

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [50 Ways to Leave Your Lover](http://skidmo-fic.livejournal.com/54148.html#cutid1) challenge (on LJ).

It was good, when Frank was sent stateside. There was only the two of them in the tent, and they were free to do as they wished. And they did. And it was good.

**

B.J. would mumble in his sleep, whispering sweet nothings to a wife that was far away. And Hawkeye, he would lie there in the next corner over, his head propped up on his arm, watching the other man sleep. He never touched him as he slept; he just watched.

**

They’d kissed at Rosie’s before, but it was silly, and goofy, and they’d had too many beers, and mostly they’d done it to freak out Frank. It was nothing; it was something, but a kind of something that meant nothing, really.

**

They were finally relieved, after something like thirteen hours of surgery, and they dashed back to their quarters, scared for their lives. The North Koreans were pushing especially hard against the front, and the shellfire was louder. There was talk among the officers of snipers making it past the front lines, but it was just speculation.

**

The periodic thunderclaps and flashes added a touch of theatricality to the whole affair.

**

B.J. stumbled over some coiled copper tubing before his lanky body whipped around gracefully. He let himself fall limply back into the cot, exhaling in a loud moan of frustration and exhaustion. 

Hawkeye let the door slam behind him. The shelling picked up in frequency, and as he moved to his corner, his body was silhouetted against the bursts of light. He stripped his shirt off, drawing it over his head, and shook out his hair. He looked up to find that B.J. was staring at him.

They’d never talked about it, the closeness they shared. B.J. was deeply in love with his wife, and Hawkeye had his nurses, fewer now than before his partner’s arrival. But there was something in B.J.’s eyes, a genuine expression of fear and adolation, and faith – faith that a man who had survived Korea longer than he had would protect him, even if it was just through proximity.

Hawkeye could not resist that look, and the longer they looked, the harder it became to look away, and then they couldn’t do anything but look, B.J. craning his neck, and Hawkeye, his arms still tangled in his shirt, painfully aware of his naked chest.

They stayed like that for minutes, before Hawkeye slowly extracted his arms from his shirt and let it drop onto the floor. Too tired to think long and hard about what he was doing, he let his fingers flutter towards the button of his pants, pale lemon in the flickers of enemy aggression. He let them drop to the floor, stepping out of them like he was stepping out of the bath. 

B.J. just watched, his brain unable to retain control over his jaw as his lips parted unconciously.

Hawkeye walked over to his trunk, not entirely ignorant of his audience, but not performing either. He let his thumbs tuck under the elastic band holding his shorts up, tugged lightly, and helped them find their way to the floor.

By now, the other man’s cheeks were flushed. But his embarrasment was not a result of seeing another grown man naked, it was a result of _watching_ another grown man naked. Although he’d seen Hawkeye naked before, it was different, deliberately watching him undress. It was... voyeuristic. It reminded him of Peg.

Hawkeye slowly bent over, lifted the lid of the trunk, and pulled out a fresh pair of shorts. He slid them on, avoiding the temptation to reduce his pace to something tantalizing slow, like the burlesque shows he’d seen in Seoul, only in reverse.

He turned once more to B.J., who was still lying on his cot, his neck still twisted uncomfortably, his eyes on Hawkeye’s silhouette.

“Night, Beej.”

B.J. grunted in response, and Hawkeye fell back onto his own cot.

**

Neither of them slept that night.

**

Things progressed from one thing to another, and when the shelling didn’t stop for days, and their nerves were frayed beyond repair, and they needed escape, they fell to each other for support. B.J. had made a half-joke about needing a drink before anything else, and Hawkeye had softly whispered, “No,” before pulling the tall man in for a lingering kiss.

**

B.J. returned to his cot when they were finished, and Hawkeye followed him, dragging his own. The other man had turned away from him and cried, and Hawkeye had simply remained there, allowing his friend to reconcile what they had done with what he had back home.

Hawkeye told him, “It’s nothing.” But it was a nothing that meant something, really. And it was okay that they were existing in ambivalence because they were living in strange times.

And some of it was good again.

**

B.J. fell asleep, and Hawkeye watched his chest rise and fall. He longed to reach out, to touch the other man, but he didn’t want to blur the lines between them even further. His desire won out, however, and he leaned forward to kiss the other man on the shoulder.

There was a knock at the door, and Hawkeye pulled back just in time to see Radar swinging through the entrance of their quarters.

“Oh!” the young man cried, clearly torn between backing out the way he had come and covering his eyes with his his hat. He compromised by turning around and whipping his hat over his face.

Hawkeye made a shushing noise, and Radar stuttered in reply that the Colonel needed him in the O.R. immediately, but that he could tell the Colonel that he was going to be a while, and to not bother him or B.J. because they were... doing something.

Hawkeye muttered something about the war taking a vacation; Radar pretended things were normal and mumbled back that, if anything, it was back full-force, and that they were only now getting the first waves of wounded.

Hawkeye sighed in submission, kissed his lover’s shoulder again, and then stood carefully. He grabbed his uniform and followed the young man out the door, headed in the direction of helicopter blades and the war.


End file.
